The CPI (M) tired of taking panning on the issue, which even came from unexpected quarters, from the Left Front partners, today launched an offensive to counter the `charges' levelled against them by the BJP leaders during the rally here yesterday.

Dismissing the charge as `sheer nonsense,' party's state secretary Anil Biswas and the state minister for home (police) Buddhadeb Bhattacharaya, said: ``We don't have to take any criticism from aparty (BJP) which has already packed over 17 leading national institutes with the RSS and the VHP men.'' Biswas, who presided over the press conference today, however refused to comment on the appointment of Banerjee, saying ``it was decided on the basis of merit and not on the basis of her being the biographer of the Chief Minister.''

``And we really don't have to clarify our stand on the issue once again,'' Biswas, also a party's Politburo member, said here this evening.

Charging the BJP and RSS with distorting history, Biswas, who came ready to face fresh questions on the issue, said: ``We have proof that the books prescribed for the students in the RSS schools, like Vidya Bharati, teach pupils that Qutab Minar was built by Sumoodra Gupta.''

``Is this not distortion of history?'' Biswas said, asking reporters ``with such a record how dare they speak about our meddling with education?''Reading out from a book which criticised Hindu Mahashabha leader Samaproshad Mukherjee for reducing the CalcuttaUniversity as his `zamindari' when he was vice-chancellor of the university, Biswas said: ``We can always understand why the BJP leaders want to glorify a personality like Samaproshad Mukherjee.''